Muzzleloader Elk Hunt

The elk hunting trip was a success in the end but not without some epic weather, and a slow start. We were muzzleloader hunting with black powder weapons this year and everyone had cow elk licenses so there were no trophies taken but the freezer is once again full of meat so that's what's important.

One of my friends doesn't own a muzzle loading rifle so I lent him my good smoke stick a couple of years ago, and now he feels obligated to continue using it. I didn't mind because I had another that my father gave me years back, and thought it would work as well, but when I test fired it the day before opening season it tended not to go off. The percussion cap would pop but the main charge would not ignite. Needless to say that was a major annoyance, but I thought I had a work around by priming the nipple under the cap with a few extra grains of powder. Well opening day comes and I'm sitting in the field watching a good spot when along comes a bull and a cow. The cow proceeds to come right towards me and stop broadside at about 20 yards. As you have already guessed, the cap fired but the gun didn't discharge so off they run. My friend Paul and I worked on the firing mechanism that night and thought we had ironed out the problem by modifying the nipple where the percussion cap sits.

Long story short, we hunted the rest of the week without getting any more shots, but seeing game and enjoying some unseasonably warm weather. The aspen tree leaves are turning bright yellow so the forests are quite spectacular this time of year. Anyway, last Thursday the weather turned into some torrential rain storms complete with trees blowing down around the cabin. That continued all Friday and then turned to snow, which carried into Saturday and finally became a blizzard dropping about 4" on the ground. I did go out Saturday morning, as time was running out, and did locate a bull bugling. For fun I called him in from about 250 yards using some elk calls, and had him grunting and thrashing the bushes at about 35 yards but couldn't get him all the way into the open. Good practice. Saturday afternoon the weather broke enough to go out again. I was standing watching a small meadow with my head turned fully left. When I swung my head back to center I had seven cows bearing down straight at me. Of course when I cocked the hammer back they realize there was something amiss and they came to a screaming stop. I gave a cow call and managed to freeze them, lined up on the nearest one (about 15 yards) and...pop no fire. Several animals took off for the dark timber but the rest started back across the meadow. I called again and was able to confuse them long enough to replace the cap and get another shot off at about 35 yards. As luck would have it the rifle fired this time so in the 11th hour of the season I pulled it off. I didn't have our digital camera so I didn't get any pictures, but my friend may have some of the area where we were. I'll try to get those up soon. I had hoped to get Jess, and Jaimie up there but they were more interested in the school dance so they backed out.

We will be going back in October for a deer hunt and Jess says she will go on that trip so hopefully she will experience some action then.

I did bring the head home for Jess to see. I don't think she appreciated how big an animal the elk are until she saw that. As an interesting side note the elk have two large rounded teeth (both male and female) that are a form of ivory. We call them "whistlers" because of the sounds the bull elk make when they bugle. Jess and Jaimie got to hear some bugling when we were archery hunting. The elk are the only animal in the States with anything like that so they are usually keep as souvenirs. Check out this comparison of elk (left) vs Jaimie's recently extracted wisdom "whistlers".